THE CHILDREN OF IMMIGRANTS IN THE SCHOOLS: HISTORICAL ANALOGUES OF EDUCATIONAL DEPRIVATION

Addresses itself to the experience of the immigrant child in New York City between 1890-1915, affirming that the experience of the immigrant child in other American cities during this period would be the same. In 1906, the N.Y.C. public school enrollment included many foreign-born children (17%), and the children of immigrants constituted the bulk of the ele mentary and intermediate school population. More symptomatic than any other factor of the general malaise of the schools was the pervasive phenomenon of the overage pupil who was classified under the rubric "retardation" with all of its negative connotations. The Immigration Commission (1911) found that the percentage of retardation for the N.Y.C. elementary pupils was 36.4%, with the maximum retardation (48.8%) in the fifth grade. No overall programs were developed to aid any particular immigrant group. The schools were committed to Americanize (and to Anglicize) their charges. Educational theoreticians of the period (e.g. , Cubberley) saw the new immigrants as "illiterate, docile, lacking in self-reliance and initiative, and not possessing the Anglo teutonic conceptions of law, order, and government . . . ," and the school's role was "to assimilate and amalgamate." Parents had virtually no role in the school. Programs were